<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Kindest Man by saichadelic</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26668429">The Kindest Man</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/saichadelic/pseuds/saichadelic'>saichadelic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Love Confessions, This whole fic is just an excuse to compliment chouji</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:28:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,007</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26668429</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/saichadelic/pseuds/saichadelic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>'I think you're the kindest man I've ever met, Chouji.'</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Akimichi Chouji/Yamanaka Ino</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Kindest Man</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The room was laced thick with the smell of onions frying softly in a saucepan. Ino was stirring them gently with a floral set of chopsticks, her free hand wrapped around the fluted stem of a wine glass. The pretty orange of the sunset cascading on her from the window behind cast vibrant honey over her outline and Chouji thought she looked beautiful like this; comfortable, cozy, unaware of the way that warm tangerine outline made her look like the brightest point of light in the room.</p><p>‘I’m tired,’ she said, and she was facing him directly and smiling so brightly when she said it. ‘I’m almost glad Shika decided not to come, I’m not sure I have enough energy to cook for all three of us.’</p><p>Oh yeah. Shikamaru wasn’t here.</p><p>Chouji took a sip of his wine. It was sweet and tart and sparkling and so typically Ino. It had a gentle floral aftertaste.</p><p>‘It’s been hard to get Shikamaru to hang out with us since he started seeing Temari,’ he said.</p><p>‘Yeah…’ Ino stopped stirring to tip a chopping board of mushroom into the pan. ‘It’s weird seeing him being affectionate.’</p><p>‘He’s liked her for a long time,’ Chouji said. There was a dented cut on Ino’s left index finger and without thinking he reached over to brush the round pad of his pointer over it. ‘What happened?’</p><p>‘Huh?’ She looked down to where his finger had brushed against hers. ‘Oh. I caught my knuckle on the potato peeler a few days ago.’</p><p>He prodded it a little and she giggled.</p><p>‘Why didn’t you just heal it?’</p><p>Her laugh was a delicate fluttering of bells, Chouji felt the vibrations of it make the hairs on his arms stand on end. ‘It just seemed a waste. I should be able to handle a little cut, don’t you think?’</p><p>Ino was looking at him again, that smile that crinkled her eyes into petal shaped crescents patterned across her face and Chouji always found her gaze heavy. He removed his hand from hers and smiled back.</p><p>‘I suppose. I thought maybe you wouldn’t want the scar though.'</p><p>‘Hm, I guess when I was younger I might have thought like that.’ There was a thin strip of onion clinging to the chopsticks when she retracted them from the pan and she held them to Chouji’s mouth for him to take. When he opened and accepted, patterned wood slid across his tongue to give him the morsel. She used the same utensils to pick herself out some from the pan to try and he watched as the slick from his mouth entered hers.</p><p>‘Could you get the noodles out of the cupboard for me, please? Top left.’</p><p>Chouji nodded and got the noodle packet. He placed them down next to the stove top and filled a pan with water without being asked.</p><p>‘Thanks, Chouji,’ Ino said, her hand trailed the soft slope of his shoulder when she said it.</p><p>They stayed quiet for a bit. Chouji filled the silence mainly with quick, short sips of his wine as Ino continued to cook. When the water had boiled she added the noodles and three eggs. <em>Two for you and one for me</em>, she explained. The pork that had been cooking in the oven got pulled out and she asked him to cut it. When she handed him over the knife the tip of her fingernail tickled against the inside seam of his thumb.</p><p>The meat was hot enough that it burned his fingers holding it steady as he cut, and when Ino noticed she tittered and placed her slender digits over his, trickled healing chakra into the back of his palm as he worked.</p><p>‘I thought it was a waste to heal minor things,’ Chouji joked, he nudged her shoulder lightly with his own. It made her smile in petalled crescents again.</p><p>‘I said it was a waste for me. Not for you.’</p><p>‘Contradictory…’ he said and her laughter fluttered over his cheek. Her breath smelled like the floral wine they had been drinking.</p><p>He thought their hands looked nice together. Her fingers resting over the top of his were longer and skinnier, his skin slightly more tanned. The moon of her nail beds were long and well manicured and when she moved them to fit more comfortably in between the grooves of his they were an almost perfect fit for the space between his digits. She rested her head on his shoulder and her index brushed up and down his own as chakra poured from her fingertips but all Chouji could focus on was the scar on her knuckle from where she had peeled her finger a few nights before.</p><p>‘Do you still have feelings for Sasuke?’ he asked.</p><p>‘Sasuke?’ His name feathered warm over Chouji’s neck as she spoke it. A slice of meat fell neatly into the stack he was making. ‘No. Not like Sakura does, anyway.’</p><p>‘What do you mean?’</p><p>The chakra in her hands stopped flowing and she curled her fingers so they wrapped underneath Chouji’s palm.</p><p>‘I have strong feelings for Sasuke, because we all do. I want him to come home like we all do. But I think I realised a little while back that I don’t love him. It’s not fair of me to pretend that I feel the same way Sakura does. I couldn’t know what it feels like to have the person you’re closest to leave like that.’</p><p>‘I’m sorry for asking,’ Chouji said. He thought maybe they should have stopped holding hands by now. The finished pile of sliced meat steamed to the side of their connected hands as Ino’s nails felt over the life lines hidden on his palm.</p><p>‘I’m kind of embarrassed about it now,’ she said. She removed her hand from his to drain the noodles and eggs into a colander in the sink and the loss of contact was prickly like running freezing cold hands under a hot tap.</p><p>‘Why would you be embarrassed?’ He turned around so he could still see her, his back resting against the wooden countertop.</p><p>‘I was just so… loud about my feelings for him. I dug myself into a hole.’ She separated portions of noodles and broth into two bowls.</p><p>He went to speak but before a word left his mouth she spoke up again.</p><p>‘Do you have feelings for anyone, Chouji?’ Ino’s gaze was steady and piercing on him. She brought the two bowls of undecorated ramen to the chopping board next to him and began placing neat slices of pork into the bowls, one bowl with a more generous portion than the other.</p><p>‘You know the answer to that.’ Because of course she knew. Everyone could tell even if he’d never said it.</p><p>‘Why have you never tried anything?’ She cracked the eggs on the chopping board, rolling them along the wooden surface and then digging her nail into the calcium to peel the skin off them in one easy motion. When she cut them in half they were perfectly soft boiled and she placed the halves, golden yolk up, in each bowl.</p><p>‘I,’ Chouji struggled to stumble through the thicket of words threatening to spill from his mouth. Mean, self-deprecating things about all the ways he could picture himself being a burden to her. ‘I just didn’t.’</p><p>‘I think you’re the kindest man I’ve ever met, Chouji.’ A scoop of crispy onions and mushrooms in each bowl and the ramen was done. She handed over his bowl, picked up their wine glasses, and led him to eat on the sofa in the corner of her small studio apartment.</p><p>The food was good, and Ino’s legs were tucked up close next to Chouji’s thighs the whole time. Neither of them acknowledged it, the way her knees dented into the flesh of his leg from their proximity. By the time they had finished eating the sun had set completely. They had both finished their glasses of wine and the warmth of the alcohol had flushed Ino pink, starting at her cheek and trailing down her neck to disappear beneath her purple collar.</p><p>It had become habit for team InoShikaCho to share a meal together after a practice session. A comfy tradition that stemmed from years of enforced bonding drilled into them from Asuma-sensei. Choji was glad for it. He felt closeness with Shikamaru and Ino that he didn’t feel with anyone else; their bond stronger than friendship. To him, Shikamaru and Ino were a chosen family.</p><p>‘If I asked you make a move, would you?’ Ino asked, the moonlight slipping into the room through the window reflected in her eyes.</p><p>‘Why would you ask me to?’ he asked. </p><p>‘Chouji…’ The moonlight in her eyes was deep and pocked and he could see the red swirls of his Akimichi symbols mixed in with that rippling dark reflection. ‘It’s amazing how you don’t see yourself the way other people do.’</p><p>She put her empty wine glass down on the coffee table, pulled herself even closer to him so her legs were draped over his, she twined their fingers back together and her palm was warm against his.</p><p>‘I know who I am. I’m proud to be who I am,’ Chouji said, he smiled a small, reassuring smile at her in an attempt to ease her worry. His shorter fingers curled to hold her hand more definitively.</p><p>‘I haven’t had feelings for Sasuke for a long time,’ she said. Her eyes never left his.</p><p>‘You already said that,’ he said lightly, teasing a smile from her despite the heavy atmosphere settling around them.</p><p>‘You’re so dense sometimes.’ She rested her free hand on the slope where his shoulder met his arm and Chouji got distracted by that cut across her finger again, two small indents across the wrinkled skin of her knuckle. ‘I don’t have feelings for Sasuke because I have feelings for you.’</p><p>It was like standing outside in a thunderstorm. Like lightning striking the metal stalk of an umbrella. A heavy cascade of <em>what did you just say</em> because there was no way he had processed what she said correctly.</p><p>‘I don’t know how to be anymore obvious that it’s reciprocated… Shikamaru thought I should just tell you. I was hoping you could figure it out on your own though.’</p><p>She brushed her fingers up and down the length of his bicep as she spoke and it was all so much. There was rain in his head and lightning striking his umbrella and there was the feeling of her warm palm pressed against his and Chouji didn’t know what else to do; he turned his head to the side and stilled her fingers with a kiss to the scar across her knuckle.</p><p>Her gasp of surprise was a pretty, delicate sound, so quiet he almost didn’t catch it.</p><p>‘Why?’ he asked against her hand.</p><p>‘Why what?’</p><p>‘Why do you like me?’</p><p>‘Chouji…’ She moved to pull herself closer to him, took her hand from where he was resting against it to wrap her arm around his neck and stroke gently through the long hair at his nape. She moved their hands that were still held together to sit on the bench of her purple skirt stretched across her thighs.</p><p>‘You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met. You’re handsome, gentle, funny, caring, selfless, you always let me drag you shopping and never complain about how long it takes, you always remember my birthday, you fill up the pan for the noodles without me asking, you’re cozy and I like the way your nose crinkles when you smile. I could carry on. Do you want me to?’</p><p>His vision was clouded behind a blur of overwhelming emotion as tears threatened to spill over the cliff of his bottom lid, but even through the haze he could see the dazzling white of the smile she was giving him. She untangled their hands and cupped his face, wiping away unshed tears with the softness of her thumb.</p><p>‘For how long?’ he asked and he knew Shikamaru would be chuckling at the way his voice was wobbling.</p><p>‘A while,’ was all Ino said. She squished his cheeks slightly between her hands and it pushed a small, blubbering laugh from his mouth. She was there, small and delicate and looking up at him like he was the only person that mattered, and the moon swimming in her eyes and through her long hair and he was overwhelmed all over again. He closed his eyes and heard her giggle.</p><p>‘How long specifically?’ he asked.</p><p>‘Geez, I don’t know, Chouji,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Eight or nine months?’</p><p>‘Eight or nine months?’ His eyes shot open. ‘That’s such a long time!’</p><p>‘You’re telling me,’ she said, her hands trailed down his cheeks and neck to rest against the firm swell of his chest. ‘Chouji, I’ve been flirting with you really obviously that whole time.’</p><p>‘You have?’ he picked one of her hands up off his chest and brought to his lips, pressing soft kisses to the bend of each of her fingers. The way it brought a pink shine to her cheeks, the tips of her ears, the point of her nose, made Chouji warm with pride.</p><p>‘You remember that time we went to Iwagakure and that girl asked you out to dinner and you were really excited and happy and asked me to help you pick an outfit to impress her?’</p><p>Of course he remembered, Ino had worn her hair in long, waterfall plaits down either side of her head that day, with little jewels beaded through some of the loops of each strand. She had looked so pretty that people’s heads turned towards them as they walked through the street assuming she was someone noble and important.</p><p>‘Yeah, I remember,’ he said.</p><p>She laughed, moved closer so the tips of their noses almost brushed together and her weight was resting almost entirely on his right thigh.</p><p>‘That bracelet I gave you, you remember?’</p><p>‘Yeah, it was pretty.’ It was a simple thing, gold wreaths of ivy that had looped around his wrist.</p><p>‘It was a promise band…’</p><p>‘Ino, what?!’</p><p>‘Well, I didn’t want you to have a bad time, but I didn’t want her taking you from me,’ she said, pouting at his shocked expression. ‘I thought if you were wearing a promise bracelet she would think maybe you’d just accepted her invitation to be kind and wouldn’t flirt with you.’</p><p>‘She was kind of quiet the whole time,’ Chouji pondered. He settled his hands on her hips, trying not to show too much glee at the way she was letting him touch her like this.</p><p>‘Are you mad?’ she asked.</p><p>‘Not really,’ he said with a smile. His thumbs rubbed against her hips and she shuddered. ‘Where did you get a promise bracelet from anyway?’</p><p>‘Oh, you know, it’s just one of those things that’s good to have around in case of emergencies.’</p><p>‘If you say so,’ he muttered.</p><p>Her eyes dropped from where they had been locked with his to look down at the swell of his lips and Chouji’s rhythmic brush of thumbs against hips stuttered to a halt in anticipation. She leaned forward, so close that he could hear the shake in her breath, feel the flutter of her long eyelashes as they closed, only stopping when their noses touched completely and Chouji realised that she was waiting for him to breach the final barrier of distance, to meet her in the middle. He turned his head and brought himself forward and then they were kissing.</p><p>Ino’s lips were warm and soft, they were full and smooth and when she tilted herself to connect them better they slotted into the hollows of his own. She let out a happy sigh when they parted and there was a soft downturn to her eyes where swimming moonlight blue met brown again.</p><p>She smiled and cupped his jaw, squished his face again so his mouth pouted and his eyes disappeared from the soft round press of his cheeks pushing together.</p><p>‘You’re my favourite person, Chouji,’ she said as she let go, allowing his face to relax back to normal, and she kissed him to punctuate her point. ‘She couldn’t have you.’</p><p>‘I’ve,’ Chouji began, but stopped to give himself time to process what he was going to say. ‘You’ve been my favourite person for years… Don’t tell Shikamaru.’</p><p>Ino laughed, giddy and pink and high-pitched. ‘I’m definitely going to tell Shikamaru,’ she said.</p><p>He groaned beneath her and she leaned down from her perch on his right thigh to press their lips together again, taking the noise from him before he had a chance to complain properly. The kiss was slow and delicate but her hands roamed him happily. She trailed his chest and shoulders, climbed to knot in his hair only to fall back down to balance against his chest again. One of Chouji’s hands was still playing at her waist while the other moved up to loop delicately in her long ponytail. She tasted like ramen, floral wine, cherry pink lipgloss and when she opened her mouth slightly to lick into his, her soft, smooth tongue danced the taste of her across his senses even more.</p><p>They parted when delicate breaths turned heaving. When they couldn’t breathe those claustrophobic shared breaths any longer, the warmth of her shifting away from him was like jumping into a plunge pool after soaking in a hot tub. Her pink gloss was smeared across her philtrum and her lips were a shining kiss-red. She rubbed his chest as she smiled at him, surprisingly coy in the way her eyes were locked onto the space just below his eyes, not quite meeting his gaze.</p><p>‘Do you wanna get barbecue with me, one day?’ he asked.</p><p>She let out a heavy breath of relieved laughter and her eyes met his. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, I’d like that.’</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed. </p><p>I'm fairly new to the Naruto fic writing scene, does anyone know where is a good place to find someone willing to beta read future fics for me? I don't have anyone to do it for me at the moment and I know I miss a lot of mistakes.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>